Ringing The Changes (25 March 1978)

With two of its biggest buildings being given over to telephone services, Bletchley is becoming the most “phoney” place for miles around – in the best sense of the word, of course.  I myself do not have a telephone .  This might surprise you.  The reason is the same as that which compels me to do without colour television and other things.  My financial priorities of necessity lie elsewhere.

Yet in my time as a newspaper man I have been a devourer of telephones.  One of the first things I had to learn in my training was how to use the office telephone.  This was fixed to a wall at a suitable height for standing at.

A right-handed reporter holds the phone to his left ear so as to leave his other hand free for writing.  Today I have a failing in that ear and I attribute it to the cracks, bangs and wallops which that eardrum has received on the phone over my 50 years in this trade and also to the strain of bad lines.

Busy End

When I came to Bletchley in 1946 there was still people around who could remember the town’s first telephone exchange.  This was opened on December 18, 1905.  At that time Fenny was still the busy end of the town and the Aylesbury Street Post Office was the one most used by the general public.  The office occupied one of the two front rooms on a double-fronted house next door to the present sub-office.  When it was decided that the town should have a telephone exchange, it was installed in the other front room.

The house was occupied by Mrs. Rose Symington, who was both post mistress and telephone mistress.  Helping her with the telephones were the town’s first two “Hello girls”.  They were Mrs. Symington’s daughter, Juliet, who became Mrs. W. J. Elmer, of Northampton; and Miss Ethel Grant, who later became Mrs. A.E. Staniford and mother of Mr. Ron Staniford.  Subscribers were given a 24-hour service.  A bell was fitted in Mrs. Symington’s bedroom and she took the night duty.

At first there were only 30 subscribers.  Directories for 1907 and 1908 show a not-inconsiderable variation in names.  Some subscribers listed in 1907 are no longer listed in 1908, while some new names appear in the 1908 list.  However, just a few of the original subscribers listed in 1907 are no longer listed in 1908, while some new names appear in the 1908 list.  However, just a few of the original subscribers were still listed under their original names right up to the time when Bletchley became Milton Keynes.  Now, apart from the Aylesbury Street Post Office (which was Bletchley 1), just one subscriber retains the original name – Ramsbotham and Co, the florists, who were Bletchley 20.

Years later the exchange moved across the street to the corner building outside which a public call box stands.  The exchange was still there when I arrived.  In 1949 there were 449 subscribers, including 48 who shared their circuit with a second subscriber.  The staff had grown to one supervisor, nine female operators, and three male operators for night duties.

But the days of manual exchanges were already numbered.  It was clear that the expanding town of Bletchley would have to have an automatic exchange.  The site selected was at the top of Church Street where the present big building now stands.

When the exchange was completed, and as a gesture to the good or bad old days, Mrs. A.E. Staniford was invited to perform a changeover ceremony, which she did by simply pulling or pressing a master switch.

But not all problems were thereby resolved.  Bucks was a hotch-potch of automatic exchanges and smaller manual exchanges.  Moreover there was no main exchange in the county at all, the nearest being at either Bedford, Oxford or Reading, according to which part of Bucks you were in.  This meant, for one thing, that the 999 emergency system could not yet be applied.

Nearest

If you wanted the fire brigade, for instance, you dialled “O”.  This went to the nearest main exchange, who notified their county brigade, who in turn notified a Bucks brigade and so on.

Since then we have had STD instituted and, marvel upon marvels, it works.  But with five digits now required for the simplest local call, it isn’t as easy to carry a large number of telephone “addresses” in your head as it used to be.  At one time I knew 50 or 60 local numbers by heart.  Today I know no more than four.